A Light in the Darkness of Knowledge.

(11) Reentry by assault.  The writer-artist makes sure that he is in the world and that he is really by taking on the world, usually by political action and, more often than not, revolutionary.  Even if one is imprisoned by the state—especially if one is imprisoned—one can be certain of being human.  Ghosts can’t be imprisoned.  This stratagem is more available to European writers, who are taken more seriously than American writers.  The secret envy of American writers: Alexander Solzhenitsyn.  Despite their most violent attacks on the state and the establishment, nobody pays much attention to American writers, least of all the state.  To have taken on the state and defeated it, like Solzhenitsyn, is beyond the wildest dreams of the American writer.  Because the state doesn’t care.  This indifference leads to ever more frantic attempts to attract attention, like an ignored child, even to the point of depicting President Johnson and Lady Bird plotting the assassination of Kennedy with Barbara Garson’s MacBird!, or President Nixon having sex with Ethel Rosenberg and being buggered by Uncle Sam in Times Square in Robert Coover’s The Public Burning.

Still, no one pays attention.

A paradigm of this generally failed reentry option: a lonely “radical” American writer standing outside the White House gate, screaming obscenities about this fascist state, dictatorship, exploitation of minorities, suppression of freedom of speech, and so on and on—all the while being ignored by President, police, and passerby.

There are worse thing than the Gulag.

–Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos, page 158.

Everybody has a world view. Doctors, teachers, firemen, Christians, Muslims, scientists and authors. People who do not know they have a world view possess one as much as people who can clearly articulate theirs. Even people who deny they have a world view, or even that is is possible for man to have a world view, are promoting a world view.

Simply stated, a world view is the mental grid work we use to make sense of the world around us. Everything, seen and unseen, immanent and transcendent, is filtered through our world view. It happens so often and naturally that we are unaware of it for the most part.

Input is not the only thing that is filtered through our world view, our actions and thoughts are also a result of our world view. When I think to myself, “I should apologize to Jim because I hurt his feelings last week,” I have just made a statement about a moral or ethical component of my world view. My world view dictates that when one is wronged by another party, the offending party should apologize to clear things up.

Of course the issue goes much deeper than this, as we can continue asking questions here: What constitutes an offense? Why am I morally obligated to apologize? What if the offended party does not want to hear my apology? What if I just thought that Jim was offended, but he really was not? When I apologize am I “doing the right thing,” or do I am doing it because “I feel bad about it.” If some one wrongs me, do I expect an apology from them also? etc. So far we have only asked questions regarding the Ethical aspect of our world view, but are there other aspects to a world view?

The late Belgian philosopher Leo Apostel created a seven point model to help us categorize different parts of our world view.

1. Ontology. The nature of Being, What is reality?
2. Explanation. The rules and law governing the Cosmos.
3. Futurology. In Christian terms this would be Eschatology, the End Times. How things will play out when we reach the end of time.
4. Ethics. What is good and right conduct for man?
5. Methodology. What are the acceptable methods to get things done in our world view. (Francis A. Schaeffer wrote a whole book about this called How Should We Then Live?)
6. Epistemology. The study of Knowledge, or how we know what we know.
7. Etiology. The study of Causality, or the reason things are the way they are.

Every statement, action or thought, that you or anybody else in the universe says, does or thinks will be connected to one of the above categories (and more than likely several). As you can see with our previous example of the transgression and apology with Jim, all seven of these come into play, either directly or indirectly.

As I originally stated, all authors have a world view. This world view shapes everything they write, it colors all of their perceptions, and even if they admit it or not, can be seen in everything they write. Some authors “just” write never thinking about their world view. Others set out to write with the intention of convincing others that their world view is correct, or at least worthy of merit and further investigation. Next time we will look at two of the methods that authors use to communicate their world view.

As my fiancée and I are not exactly loaded with money, we have been looking for ways to save on the wedding. The other night I had a great idea for mailing out our invitations. Instead of putting the recipients address in the regular area, I thought we could just put it in the return address area instead, moving our address from the return field to the recipients field. Once that is done, drop it in a mailbox some where without a stamp on it (preferably not your own). Then when the mail man gets it he “returns” it to the “recipient” because they did not use the proper postage when mailing the invitation.

For some reason this idea which would save us over $40.00 in postage was shot down as ‘crass.’

I finished reading Greene’s The Power and the Glory a about a week and a half ago.  I must say that I am very impressed with the book.  If I were to sum up the book quickly I would say: The Donatist controversy in a modern setting.  Or possibly: St. Augustine speaking through Greene and schooling the modern world on the real meaning of Grace.

The Donatists were heretics who had a foot hold in the North Africa Churches of the fourth and fifth centuries.  The believed that sacraments performed by lapsed or heretical clergy were invalid.  They also held that the spiritual authority of those clergy were no longer binding either.

While this may sound good at first to our flesh, who is always looking for some merit, some filthy form of uprightness, a moments consideration shows this line of doctrine to be unsound.  We you baptized by a Bishop who recanted his faith under the persecutions?  Your baptism was not really a baptism.  Even if that Bishop later repented.  Which brings us to another point, repentance.  They did not have a very high view of repentance.  Lapse after you were baptized?  No more grace for you.  Married by a clergy man who has an earnest but misguided view of the Incarnation?  You marriage is no longer valid.  That means you have been fornicating, and if you are already a baptized Christian… well, that is bad and no more grace for you.  Took the Lord’s Supper from an unworthy elder?  Then it really was not the Lord’s Supper, just some bread and wine.

It is also a convenient doctrine for those who do not like the authority of the Church.  Do not like the minister’s sermon?  He is an unworthy minister, his spiritual authority is no longer binding.  We do not have to listen to him.

Of course the Church, lead in all Truth by the Holy Spirit, saw this doctrine to be the error that it was and condemned it.   Then after it was condemned it was fought against and the dirty lie was stamped out as an organized doctrinal system until some modern Churchmen, to ’spiritual’ to be bothered by history and sound teaching, resurrected it in some Pentecostal and Fundamentalist circles.

At any rate, Christ’s Bride saw that the Biblical principals were that God created the offices of the Church, man did not.  We could not create them, we can not reshape them, we will never be able to abolish them.  They are what they are.  We do not have men who are fit for the offices.  We are all unfit to serve in these offices.  They are only imposed upon us by a loving God.  And even then those He chooses for His offices in the Church are not always the men that we would choose.   In this way we see that the power is not in the man but in the office, because the office belongs to God and not to the one holding the office.

This is the frame work that Greene tells his story in.  It works well with his two main characters: a whiskey priest who is very aware of his own sinfulness and a morally upright and ethical atheist who enforces the stringent laws against the Church.

After have a tough go the last few weeks I have been thinking about the different roles and offices that God imposes on a man.

One, He calls a man to be a father.  This office is a shadow God the Father.  As God raises and guides us, so should he.

Two. A man and his wife participate in bearing the Image of God when they join in marriage and bear children.  Each on their own are not able to bear children, revealing the selfishness of saying, “I want to have children.”  Each man and woman, one in flesh, partake of the office by procreating.

Three.  When a man takes a wife he taking on the role of Christ towards the Church.  It is for her he is crushed.

In theory when a man asks a Christian woman to be his wife, all of these roles should keep the process of generation working smoothly.  The groom and the Father-in-law are probably both very aware that they have demanding offices imposed upon them.  This must contribute to things not going as smoothly as they should.

I have been reading The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene. I usually take books to work so I can read on break and lunch. Needless to say I have been able to get a number of interesting conversations out of it. Mostly because people confuse it with another novel (novel series really) called The Work and the Glory by Gerald N. Lund.

Lund is a Mormon author. Living in Idaho, many people are aware of Mormons, if not from a Mormon background themselves. Most people seem to assume that you are a Mormon, too. As The Power and the Glory has a lot of hard grace it the story line, it makes a great spring board. While Greene may not have been a good Christian, his stories have none of the fuzzy, greasy, feel good grace that slither off the pages of popular Christian novels. One of the main themes in The Power and the Glory is, “You did not choose me, I chose you.” Something our legalistic flesh needs to hear.

I haven’t finished the book yet, but am about three quarters of the way through. Unless Greene really decides to screw up the ending, I can whole heartedly recommend this book with out feeling like a sleaze bag.

So I saw the Beowulf movie. In a lot of ways it reminded me of the Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within movie. It had some cool special effects, and most of the the movie was carried on the special effects. So while it was cool eye candy, it will be something I’ll probably never revisit again, as CGI eye candy never ages well. It might make for novelty in some future ‘History of Film 231′ class, but the motion capture technology, and not the story line will be up for discussion.

For one, they make the claim that this is the ‘true’ story of Beowulf. You pretty much know that is going no where. I felt like it was that King Arthur movie a few years back, that made so many blunders in the scope of real history with in the first ten minutes that I had to laugh. (Case in point, all the ‘Christian’ soldiers of Rome with their Crusader style shields). Beowulf was no different, if there was a way to take a jab at Christianity they did it.

At one point a character asks if they should pray to the new Roman God Christ Jesus. He is specifically told that they do not need a savior, they need a hero. Then there is a further comment about the death of the hero culture and the birth the the martyr culture. Now I realize that one of the themes found is many of the sagas is of Christianity replacing the older Paganism and the tension it created. So all in all it was called for and I did not feel that was to far fetched.

Of course the irony of it was the movie was a testament as to why sinful man needed a savior. If it was a court room scene, it went as follows: I am Beowulf, here is my defense attorney Pelegius. Pelegius opens his mouth and there is the sound of many men of valor sucking wind through thousands of those small, red coffee straws. Every body on the jury laughs at the pathetic attempt. They do not even bother to pass judgment, instead wandering to the nearest culinary establishment and getting a round on the house.

We don’t need a savior, we need a hero. But what happens when we need to be saved from the actions of our hero? We are back to the original problem.

On an interesting side note, I remember reading some papers regarding Beowulf and Christ. Apparently there are several places in Beowulf where the author is quoting and reworking material from the Christian liturgy of the time. As such there is a large amount of Christian imagery applied to Beowulf. Now, while Beowulf is the Christ figure in many of the scenes, he is not ‘Christ.’ The author appears to be working in the ancient Judaeo-Christian literary tradition of typology.

In typology, a person in a story can take on roles and traits of a larger archetype, but still be separate and distinct from what he is representing. Think along the lines of a shadow of things to come. In this way, we see some foreshadowing of Christ in a flawed figure such as Samson. Once you begin to see the thing, and the shadow of the thing, much of the imagery that Bible employs begins to make sense. We can see that the office a person holds is not something they have created, but something they have entered into. Then that office is reflected, often in poor ways, but reflected none the less, into their story.

In that respect, I found it strange that a clearly Christian story could be reworked into a story that seemed rather far from its Christianity. But then I can see the deeper humor that God likes to indulge in, where an anti-Christian message, can become a very strong Christian message.

While the main web page has not been updated for several months, I have been busy scanning new material. One of the perks of my new job is that I have access to a high speed scanner. While I do not get to use it very often (I am at work after all), there are days that are slow so I take advantage of it while I am working.

I have scanned off this interesting book: E. E. Cunnington, The Adelphi New Testament. London: T. Foster Unwin. 1919.

It is the seconded edition of The New Covenant, commonly called the New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ: A revision of the version of A.D. 1611. As far as I can tell it looks like only the title and publisher changed with this printing. I was hunting around for this book for some time. Not because of any ‘value’ that it has in the history of Bible translations. It has been largely forgotten and it did not influence any later translators (as far as I can tell).

Most of the appeal was brought on by the fact that I had never seen it before. It is listed in catalogs and some library databases, but no one had bothered to scan it. I did finally find it online for purchase so I quickly forked over the cash. To my disappointment, it is printed on rather poor quality paper and I was afraid I would damage it by the scanning process. Thankfully I was able to manage with out much harm to the book.

While working through the renewals I found some time ago that the forerunner to the King James II Bible by Jay P. Green had not been renewed. This earlier incarnation is called the Childrens’ King James New Testament. I was able to pick up a copy for really cheap, and since it is a modern printing, I had the binding cut off at Kinko’s.

(Well, there were really two really cheap copies involved. The first one had its binding cut off at Staples. Needless to say the quality of the simple cut left much to be desired. Then they had the nerve to charge me after they blotched the simple job. So with half of my text in loose leaf and half of it still attached to the binding I searched for another copy. Then promptly took it to Kinko’s).

Then I loaded all of the approximately 700 pages into the high speed scanner at work and had it jammed up on the third page. With a little tweaking and coaxing about 25 minutes later I had it scanned off in 600 DPI glory. The only problem is that as it is a Children’s Bible, there are many pictures in it, so I am going back through and scanning the pictures off in color.

On the completed scanning list and waiting for be to stop being lazy and process the files are also The Shorter New Testament and The Norlie Simplified New Testament. The Shorter New Testament is one of the many abridged Bibles that came out around a century ago. Once again it seems to have had little influence on later editions.

The Norlie translation has some interest as it was published later by Zondervan. He first did a private printing of it back in 1951. This private printing was for family, friends, several academic institutions and potential publishers. It consisted of memo graphed pages bound in a hard cover. I was able to find a copy of this early edition, but it is bound to tightly to scan it with out harming the pages. To my surprise, it is autographed by the translator and has a small dedication to the college he taught at for many years. Apparently it was given to the college library. As I do not know how to scan it will out destroying it, it now sits on my shelf waiting for the day it can be turned into a digital copy.

To make up for not having the memo graphed edition in digital format, I was able to find one of the later, professionally published editions that lapsed into the public domain. Zondervan did two printings. One in 1961 an another a year later. The first one was never renewed. The second one is a different edition called The Children’s Simplified New Testament. It was renewed.

At any rate, these are some of my projects I am trying to finish.

A friend and I were talking about how our reading habits have suffered in the last year.  She got married has a baby, a toddler and a small business they just started to boot.  I’m not sure what my excuse is but I am sure it rather lame compared what hers is.

I have only been reading about one book a week for the last few months.  I have been keeping a list so I will know what a more long term average is.  I write the title, author, number of pages and the date I finished it on down in a small acid free journal I got from a large faceless book broker at a fair price.

She has knocked it up a notch and is attempting to read 200 classic books in a year.  Both of us could have easily completed the target goal before “life” happened.  But with all the obligations of our daily lives we both find it harder to soar into the large “Have read this year” reading lists we used to keep.  Now it is mostly squeaking by.  Squeaking by for us, as according to a recent study I read, only 1 out of 3 Americans will ever finish reading a book after they graduate from college.  Scary stuff.

Go check out her blog at 200 Books.  She plans on updating it daily.

I have recently been going through some trying times.  As a reflective person I tend to over analyze things at times.  I have come to the conclusion that the, “If only I would have done this…” or “If I only would have tried harder..” prompts are not really the work of the Spirit.  It seems to me that they are more the work of despair.
1) I have done the best I am able with the information that I have.
2) Even if my “best” was not “good enough,” it was still my best.
Grace is restorative, nagging prompts in your mind are not.  We have our failings, we repent, learn and move on.